Pakistan's inter-services intelligence directorate: covert action and internal operations

摘要

Owen Sirrs' history of the ISI gives a hard hitting account of an organisation which he accuses, amongst other things, of creating the Afghan Taliban, supporting militant groups that fight in Kashmir, coordinating violent attacks on India, killing journalists and fixing elections. And having run though these various ISI activities he reaches the conclusion that for democracy to emerge in Pakistan, the country's premier spy agency would have to be disbanded. But that is not going to happen.The ISI, especially in the period after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, has become so powerful and has reached into so many areas of Pakistani life, that there are few political developments in which it does not have some involvement. In fact, anyone writing a history of the ISI ends up writing a history of Pakistan as a whole. Owen Sirrs'book does not shy away from the broad sweep needed to describe the nature of the ISI and its impact on Pakistan. Inevitably many of the agency's activities are still not in the public domain. No history of such a secretive outfit is ever going to be comprehensive. Nevertheless, by trawling US and British official records as well as information already in the public domain and in particular the memoirs of retired military offices and bureaucrats, Sirrs has put together an account that summarizes much that is already known about the ISI and sheds some new light on a few dark corners.